


safe & sound

by transpeterparker (robertmontauk)



Series: lines don't have ends [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Blind Character, Captain America's Shield, Coma, Comatose James "Bucky" Barnes, Cryofreeze (Marvel), Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Genderqueer Character, M/M, Pining, Protective Steve Rogers, Vibranium (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:27:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21948049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robertmontauk/pseuds/transpeterparker
Summary: Steve visits Bucky in cryo.It’s not easy.[stand-alone]
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: lines don't have ends [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1541914
Kudos: 16





	safe & sound

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jb_slasher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jb_slasher/gifts).



> number two of the LDHE series!
> 
> reminder: (i don't know if i said this before actually) these two fics happen to be chronological, but they will not always be! after everything's been published, i'm going to create a mass fic with everything in it's proper order.
> 
> thus - be sure to subscribe to the series if you want to see more :D
> 
> hope you enjoy!

There’s something so peaceful about Bucky like this.

He doesn’t even look like he’s in a coma, really - he looks like he’s just asleep, if not for the lack of breath in his chest.

True, he concedes, it’s a little disconcerting not to see a regular rise and fall - not to be able to check for himself that Bucky’s alive - but he’s comforted by the heartbeat (and blood pressure, and oxidation level, and…) monitor, so he doesn’t dwell on it.

Having Bucky here, safe, is more than enough.

He never thought he would see this, once Bucky fell. Sure, the man in front of him isn’t the same - longer hair, thinner cheekbones, no smile on his face - but it’s the same guy, deep down.

Even if he wasn’t, though - Steve wouldn’t stop loving him if the world held a gun to his heart for it, would rather take a bullet to the brain than let this man go unloved. 

"Stark helped make this, you know."

Steve jolts, startled out of his reverie. 

What?

“What?”

“Yeah,” she says, folding her hands in her lap. “T’Challa mentioned to him that we were trying to figure out ways to remove the trigger words, and he suggested this. It’s working, as you can see.”

"Are you sure it's safe?" he asks, instinctively. 

Shuri rolls her eyes. "You wouldn't be asking that if you didn't know.”

He shrugs. “Maybe.”  _ But it's different now that  _ ~~_ Tony _ ~~ _ Stark's involved, _ he doesn't say. 

“It's safe, Steve.” She sighs. “I wouldn't have let him go in if it wasn't safe.”

“Yeah - yeah. I know. Sorry.”

She smiles - a graceful little thing, just the slip of her mouth. “Don’t worry about it. You’ve got too much on your plate as it is, anyway.”

_ Too much on my plate. _ Shit - you could say that again.

Actually, speaking of -

“Hey, is T’Challa around?”

###  \---

“Seriously, thanks again.”

M'Kolli shrugs. “No problem. I was happy to do so; I have business here anyway. T’Challa knows you are coming?”

Steve hesitates. “Uh. Shuri said she would, but I don’t actually -”

“- know if she did,” she finishes, “yes, I understand. It’s fine. I will let him know.”

“Oh - okay. Thanks.”

She nods and walks back into the jet. The doors close, the jet lifts, and Steve is left alone in front of the palace.

Somebody grabs his right arm - mid-toned, somewhere in his (her? His? Their? Their is probably the most politically correct, he decides) mid-20s, hair in dreads tied up into a bun, his left eye blank and grey, the other a light brown - and pulls him to the front door. Steve tenses but forces himself not to fight back.  _ Nobody is going to hurt you,  _ he reminds himself.

(His second instinct, still, is to pull away and ask why in the  _ hell _ they’re holding onto him, but he reminds himself yet again that everybody here knows him (hard not to, what with the skin), and nobody’s here to hurt him.)

He stops examining the man (man? Woman? Person.) and notices that they’re in the middle of talking. “- see him, aren’t you? I don’t know if he was notified, but I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you anyway. Gosh, you really are incredibly white, huh? I can barely see, but you're like a glowing beacon with all that skin on display! I would’ve thought spending some time in Wakanda’s sun might have darkened your complexion a little bit, but I guess not… Where are you from, anyway? I mean, obviously you’re from America, everybody knows that, but before that? I bet you’re, um. What’s that country? The one with two parts and two religions or something? It’s near Britain…”

“Ireland?” Steve says hesitantly. They remind him of Tony, in a way - he can never tell when the man’s looking for an answer or just speaking to air.

“Ireland, that’s right, thank you - you’re Irish, aren’t you? Yeah, you’ve got that sort of energy about you.”

It takes Steve a second to realize that they’re waiting for a response. “Oh. Uh. Yeah, Irish.”

“Nice. Called it. Speaking of -”

“Are you blind?” he interrupts, and immediately wants to punch himself in the face.

You’d think Miss Sarah Rogers, nicest woman on the block and a nurse to boot, would’ve been able to beat some respect into little old Stevie, but  _ apparently _ not.

They don’t quite look offended, though, and Steve sucks in a huge breath of relief when all they do is snort. “Yes, dear. Blind in my left, deaf in my right.”

Realization dawns on him. “So - I’m on your blind side?”

They shrug lightly. “It was either this or not being able to hear you, and I don’t need to see you to know that you’re here.” They squeeze his arm lightly, pointedly.

Everything makes so much more sense.

He opens his mouth to ask how they live like that. Closes it again - the question he was about to ask just faded out of his mind, but it probably wasn’t anything good. Opens it, remembering that he doesn’t know their name, but they misinterpret his weird fishmouth act and cut him off.

“Go ahead,” they say, waving a deliberately nonchalant hand.

(- and for a second, Steve is reminded almost painfully of Natasha, who consciously widens her movements whenever she’s uncomfortable -)

“Ask all of your weird and probably intrusive questions. I’ve heard it all, I promise, and it’s better to get it over with than to let it linger.”

They flash a wide smile at him, head angled a little oddly, and Steve wonders how long people have been asking them questions they don’t want to answer, how quickly they had to hide their pain behind a smile and a nod.

_ I’ve heard it all before. _

(“I’m sorry - you know I’d like to give you an A1, but -”

“I’ve heard it all before,” Steve interrupts, anger thrumming through his vocal cords. “Just give me my papers and let me go.”)

_ I’ve heard it all before. _

Steve doesn’t ask them that, though, too afraid it’ll come out something like “how long have you been like… that?”, complete with awkward hand gestures they won’t be able to see anyway. 

“What’s your name?” he asks instead, rubbing the back of his neck with his left hand.

They look at him (well - a little to the right of him), eye narrowed as if seeing him for the first time. 

(Maybe they are. Who is he to say?)

“Oh. Right, of course.”

Steve smiles, soft.

“Unzantah,” they say, head still tilted toward him. Unzantah pushes the doors open and both of them step inside, Steve holding his hand above Unzantah’s head to hold the door open.

“You’re an odd one,” they say, quiet. It’s almost discomforting, how different they seem from when he first met them, and he can’t quite put his finger on what might have caused it.

He shrugs. They stop in the middle of a room, wide and spacious with chairs collected in the center of the room. “I get that a lot, I think.”

“You think?”

He shrugs again.

A door opens somewhere behind him and he turns, seeing Unzantah turn next to him, albeit a little belatedly.

“Steve Rogers!”

It’s T’Challa, wrapped in colorful fabric like always, smile bright on his face.

“Did someone bring you in?” he asks, walking closer.

Steve gestures. “Yes - Unzan -” 

They’re not there. 

Steve whips around, scanning the room for any glimpse of them, but they’ve disappeared.

“Ah. Unzantah?”

He turns back toward T’Challa, eyebrows furrowed. “Yes - yeah, Unzantah.”

T’Challa hums, still smiling. 

_ Does he ever stop smiling? _ he wonders then stops himself - T’Challa certainly wasn’t smiling when his father died, or when they brought Bucky in. He’s not a robot, for Christ’s sake.

“He has a habit of disappearing when he thinks he’s not needed,” he says, interrupting Steve’s train of thought.

Steve eye twitches - his left one, he notes, but doesn’t have the wherewithal to recognize why. Dehydration, probably. “He?”

T’Challa hums. “For now, yes. He tends to…” His hand swirls through the air. “…switch, I suppose. He’s fluid like that.”

Steve hums.

“Have you come to ask for something?” T'Challa says, changing the subject.

(He’s not nearly as subtle as he probably thinks he is.)

He's smirking, too, almost like he's trying to hold back a laugh. 

Steve doesn't get the joke, but he laughs anyway. 

“No, your majesty,” he says, slipping one of the shield straps off his shoulder. He hadn't bothered to stop at home after seeing Bucky, wanting to head straight to T'Challa after his mission. He realizes, quite suddenly, that he's incredibly dirty - grime under his fingernails, dirt treading his skin, blood caking his hair - and he feels disgusting watching T'Challa's eyes tracking all of it.

“I came to return this to you.” He sets down the shield so that it lays down at his feet, the patriotic target painted on its back facing T'Challa.

“Return?”

“Well, I understand - if Stark Senior was telling the truth, but who knows - that the shield is made out of vibranium?”

“Oh! Yes. Right, of course.” T’Challa chuckles softly, shaking his head at himself as he crosses over to kneel before the shield. 

There’s something wrong with this tableau, Steve thinks - something off about the way Steve is taller than T’Challa when the man crouches like this, something uncomfortable in the feeling of having to look down to see his eyes.

“You know,” T’Challa muses, trailing a finger along the outer edge of the shield, “my father told me once that the Americans thought this was all that they had, all that existed. They thought they had the last of it - and this is what they decided to use it or? A man already virtually indestructible, who would serve for two more years before disappearing - with the shield itself, no less! - for seventy years! It makes me think, you know - what the priorities of America must have been like nearly 80 years ago.” It’s the most Steve’s ever heard him say in one sitting.

He sighs, pushing himself back up, and Steve steps back. “At any rate - thank you. I cannot imagine what Shuri will do with this - melt it down and make a new shield with it, knowing her, but that you for doing what is right anyway.”

Steve dips his head, smiling. “Of course.”


End file.
